Empirical Concepts Research Articles

What Next for Actor Network Theory? Inventing around Latour on a planet in distress

This is a reflection piece on the theme ‘what will happen to actor-network theory (ANT) after Latour?’ We distinguish three scenarios but focus on the one we see as the least probable but most interesting for sociology and related disciplines. With inspiration from the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern, we think of this third scenario as a way of “inventing around” Latour. In this scenario, classical ANT tenets are prolonged and refracted through Latour's later work on modes of existence and critical zones. This mutant ANT is subject to further transformations through encounters with empirical situations and concepts from many other places. We use two brief cases for illustration. The first considers the empirical potentials and possible pitfalls of Latour's modes of existence in relation to the emergence of carbon markets as a form of Anthropocene politics. The second examines recent urban upheavals and transformations in Bangkok through the lens of urban critical zones, which make visible problems of co-existence that shade into pluriversal cosmopolitics because the city is full of beings that are both modern and amodern. These cases point the way to a scenario in which ANT is still unfinished, and far from “uncritical”. It is an “indisciplinary” scenario, where ANT with sociology and adjacent disciplines venture into complex landscapes of planetary ecological disruptions and postcolonial tensions without any false protection from certified theory and pre-defined politics.

Was Grand Duchy of Lithuania a Federation?

According to received wisdom in the historiography of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), going back to M. Dovnar-Zapolski, M. Liubavski, O. Halecki, the territorial form of government in the GDL was federal in the late XV-early XVI century. The paper critically reviews the arguments advanced in favor of this thesis and argues that the concept of empire describes the territorial organization of GDL in a more accurate way. The criticism of the federalist theory is grounded in the conceptual analysis of the state forms provided by the distinguished Lithuanian historian and law theorist Mykolas Rėimeris (1880-1945). In his analysis, M. Rėimeris draws the distinction between a unitary state and three types of state compounds: federation, confederation, and empire. While federation and empire share the principle of subordination as the mode of organization, in the empire this is the subordination to a privileged metropole territory and cultural-ethnic group, while in federation all territories are subordinated to the federal center on parity grounds, all participating in federal government. Supplementing M. Rėimeris' ideas with those from the contemporary comparative sociological research on empires and imperialism (S. Eisenstadt, M. Doyle, A. Motyl, Ch. Tilly), the author argues that GDL was an empire because relations between Lithuania in the strict sense (including also some Russian lands annexed by the early XV century) and Polotsk, Vitebsk, Smolensk, Volynia, Kiev, Samogitia, etc. were those of subordination of the periphery to the imperial metropole. The proponents of the federalist thesis mistake as federalism what in reality was a system of indirect rule characteristic for premodern empires. The historiographical tradition was blind to imperial features of GDL because it implicitly or explicitly compared GDL with the Moscow state, considering it as a paradigmatic case of empires. However, the Moscow empire represents only one specific type of empire - Westphalian empire, distinguished by the early application of direct rule. While most medieval polities were transformed into sovereign territorial states and Westphalian empires in the early modern time, GDL was unique in following the path of federalization. However, GDL was transformed into a federation only on the eve of the Lublin Union in 1569, while in the XIV-first half of the XVI century it was a traditional empire, including metropolitan military agrarian domains and indirectly ruled peripheral areas shading into areas of mere hegemony.

Между имперским и постимперским дискурсом: идеи империи и революции в оптике исследователей XXI века (Рец. на: Идея империи и идея революции в русской философии и культуре XIX–XX веков: коллективная монография / отв. ред. И.И. Евлампиев. СПб.: Изд-во РХГА, 2023. 420 с.)

The paper analyses the collective monograph: “The Idea of Empire and the Idea of Revolution in Russian Philosophy and Culture of the XIX–XX Centuries”, its content being a reflection on one of the most intellectually acute and complex contradictions of Russian history – the problem of empire and revolution. This problem invariably awakens philosophical thought, forcing it to search for an explanation of the notorious “pendulum of Russian history”, the genesis of power, the vector and track of Russian history, which are intellectual outgrowths of the fundamental problem – the problem of Russian civilizational and state identity. The content of the work is an analysis of empire and revolution – the main concepts that are in the focus of philosophical interest and reflection in Russian culture of the XIX–XX centuries. Its aim is to demonstrate the theoretical demand to continue the analysis and philosophical reflection of the concepts of empire and revolution, with the task of rethinking and reinterpreting them. The thesis is presented about the inexhaustibly traditional historical-philosophical narrative (liberalism-conservatism) and the discursively traditional nature of the range of topics, problems and questions, centred on the concepts of “empire” and “revolution”, with the same inexhaustibly traditional duality of interpretation (“us–them”, “East–West”). The result of the analysis of the sections that make up the content of the monograph is the conclusion about the epistemological and axiological value of the concepts of empire and revolution, and the heuristic productivity of the works related to their analysis in the context of the challenges faced by the Russian society and state. The latter can be used as analytical tools for works that develop and deepen the problems of empire and revolution on a modern historiographical basis. The historiographical basis of the article is the works of well-known Russian and foreign authors specializing in this field of humanities, and the methodological basis is hermeneutic analysis with the involvement of the discourse of cultural studies, political science and history.

Normative empirical concepts – a practical guiding tool for economists

ABSTRACT Economists use a variety of normative empirical concepts because the economy and morality are intertwined. Often, this normativity is intended and widely acknowledged, signaling the relevance and meaning of research. Sometimes, the objectivity of research and the findings obtained by using normative concepts is problematic. Written from the perspective of a practicing economist, the article offers a practical guiding tool to economists, suggesting how to be responsible in developing and using normative empirical concepts. It is based on valuable insights from the philosophy of science and codes of conduct. It illustrates the use of the guiding tool with the example of a normative empirical concept that is widely used in development economics: ‘ethnic fractionalization’. The conclusion is that applied economists should be more involved in being accountable for the normativity in our work and that we should ensure that, by using the tool, the normative concepts that we use are acceptable.

Intuitional Content or Avoiding the Myth of the Given – A Dilemma for McDowell

ABSTRACT McDowell’s “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” (2008, 2009) attempts to reconcile two claims: 1) what we most fundamentally experience is a fundamental level of invariable simple objects and their sensible properties; experience of these objects and properties is the ultimate ground of our knowledge of the world; 2) experience is through-and-through conceptually structured. This leads McDowell to endorsing the incoherent notion of intuitional content – necessary and thus irrevisable basic empirical conceptually structured contents or empirical categories. The notion requires the necessity and irrevisability of purely formal concepts and the on-going responsiveness to experience of empirical concepts. This reveals a dilemma: If the fundamental objects of experience are invariable then they cannot have empirically conceptual form; for revisability is a mark of the empirically conceptual. But purely formal concepts cannot give us the fundamental empirical structure of the world. The dilemma forces us to choose between claiming that the fundamental objects of experience are invariable and claiming that they are conceptually formed. I conclude by briefly describing how Kant successfully faces the challenge of accounting for the most fundamental invariable level of objects of experience without yielding to the myth of the given.

On Seeing Long Shadows: Is Academic Medicine at its Core a Practice of Racial Oppression?

Suggestions that academic medicine is systemically racist are increasingly common in the medical literature. Such suggestions often rely upon expansive notions of systemic racism that are deeply controversial. The author argues for an empirical concept of systemic racism and offers a counter argument to a recent suggestion that academic medicine is systemically racist in its treatment of medical trainees: Anderson et al.'s(Academic Medicine, 98(8S), S28-S36, 2023) "The Long Shadow: a Historical Perspective on Racism in Medical Education." Contra the authors of "The Long Shadow," the author argues that racial performance disparities in medical education cannot be validly attributed to racism without careful empirical confirmation; he further argues that standards of assessment in medical education cannot be properly deemed racist merely because minority trainees are disproportionately disadvantaged by them. Furthermore, the history of medicine and society in the Anglo-European West is not, as argued by the authors of "The Long Shadow," best viewed as one long tale of racial oppression culminating in the present day pervasive racism of academic medicine in the United States. Racism is a deplorable stain on our history and our present but it is not the historical essence of Christianity, European civilization, Western medicine, or contemporary academic medical institutions.

Emergency psychiatric nursing: A concept analysis

Background: Individuals with Mental Disorders (ODGJ) are at risk of relapse, leading to emergencies. Untreated psychiatric emergencies can result in disability or even death. Emergency psychiatric care, if not promptly addressed, poses a crucial and complex topic. The aim of this research is to define and clarify these essential concepts, integrating them into mental health nursing care. Methods: Literature search employed keywords such as "emergency" AND "psychiatric" AND "nursing" in English databases (including PubMed, ScienceDirect, and CINAHL) without time restrictions. After extracting concept definitions and identifying characteristic features, psychiatric emergency nursing care was defined. Subsequently, case samples, antecedents, consequences, and empirical concept references were determined. Results: After reviewing four articles, psychiatric emergency nursing care was defined with the following attributes: "adequate response to psychiatric patients," "prompt care for patients with mental health issues should be simple and fast," and "stigma associated with those facing mental health problems." Conclusion: Mental health nursing care can utilize these findings for interventions, evaluating psychiatric emergency nursing care, and training high-quality nurses.

Co je skutečné? Ke Kantovu pojetí skutečnosti

The aim of this essay is to investigate various attempts at possible answers regarding the question of what is real. The basic assumption is that Kant had provided a philosophical theory of a kind such that it allows this question to be answered in a novel way. In order to show that, the philosophical conceptions of his predecessors are investigated: the metaphysical concept of A. G. Baumgarten on the one hand, the empirical concept of D. Hume on the other. The main result of the investigation is that, according to Kant, we can take something to be real only insofar as it is in a relationship to ourselves.

Chegaste ao Império, meu amigo: o legado da narrativa imperial russa na poesia de Joseph Brodsky

ABSTRACT This article aims to investigate the imperial element in the poetry of Joseph Brodsky through the lenses of post-colonial studies. Its ambiguity, informed by Brodsky’s experience as a poet in exile, as well as his personal cultural frame, echoes that of his poetic precursors. Thus, we briefly trace the history of the connection between Russian poetry and the imperial narrative, which began with the inception of the Russian Empire itself in the 18th century. Then, we explore the nuance of the concept of empire in Brodsky’s works through the analysis of the poems Post aetatem nostram (1970), Torso (1972) and On the Independence of Ukraine (1991). As we understand it, both the chauvinistic content of the latter poem and the positive and nostalgic aspect of empire to Brodsky reveal the longevity and the strength of the Russian imperial narrative in the country’s national literature.

The Relevance of Civility Today

The paper emphasizes the contemporary relevance of civility, understood as a respectful way of treating the other and recognition of people’s differences and sensibilities. It outlines the sociological importance of civility as being connected with its role as both a normative guidance orienting us towards prescriptive ideals and as an empirical concept with important social impact on identities and actions. The paper examines Adam Smith’s theory which roots civility in a commercial society, analyses Elias’s (1994) history of civility as the folding of the logic of the civilizing process, and it debates theories linking the idea of civility to civil society. In conclusion, emphases are put on the importance of civility, seen as the act of respectful engaging with people across deep divisions, for the quality of democracy.

From The Greek Commonwealth to The Commonwealth of Nations: Zimmern, Curtis, and a Tale of Two Titles

ABSTRACT This article analyses the development of the notion of ‘commonwealth’ within the Round Table group in relation to two books: Alfred Zimmern’s The Greek Commonwealth (1911) and Lionel Curtis’ The Commonwealth of Nations (1916). Modern historians of International Relations have argued that the title of Zimmern’s book alluded to conceptions of the British empire as a ‘commonwealth’. Drawing on previously unused archival sources and on detailed study of the different editions of The Greek Commonwealth, this article shows that Zimmern’s title did not refer to any form of political organization larger than the city-state and that IR historians have wrongly read into Zimmern’s book both the idea of commonwealth and the reading of the Athenian empire developed by Lionel Curtis. The article explores Curtis’ development of the concept of commonwealth and its reception by Zimmern and other members of the Round Table, and sets the historical narrative Curtis offers in The Commonwealth of Nations against The Greek Commonwealth. It shows that, even though Curtis used Zimmern’s work as a source, he took issue with its presentation of Athens precisely in relation to the questions of imperial organization that were the Round Table’s central concern.

Russian and Soviet in the Civilizational Space of Russia as the Basis of National-Imperial Synergy

The predominance of the principle of historical unity over the historical gap within the framework of methodological schemes of genetic information and genetic breeding in the understanding of national history assumes the assessment of the Soviet era as the key link in understanding historical integrity, and the concepts of empire and the national state as a context. The article proves the validity of the defi nition of both monarchical and Soviet Russia as an «inverse empire» with an instrumental and pragmatic attitude of the government towards the state-forming people. Artifi cial contrasting of imperial and national aspect in the framework of the stable policy of suppressing the national awareness by the state, contributes to the fi nal destruction of Russian cultural identity, while the successive development of Russia is possible on the basis of the synthesis of imperial and national forms of statehood

Applying an Empirical Approach to the Search for Equivalents in Translating Administrative Terms Used in Civil Status Records

Equivalence is a central concept in translation theory, but it is also a controversial one. According to Catford 1965; Nida and Taber 1969; Toury 1980; Pym 1992, 1995, 2004; and Koller 1995, translation is defined in terms of equivalence relations. While some authors develop a theoretical notion of equivalence, others have an empirical approach. Indeed, Toury (1980) identified an empirical use of the term: equivalence could be a descriptive term, denoting concrete objects in two languages and subject to direct observation. This paper adopts Toury’s conception of equivalence. It aims to discuss how equivalence is achieved in translation. To this end, administrative terms found in civil status records are used as examples to show how the search for equivalence is carried out in a real-life situation. Even though administrative divisions’ names may appear normal on birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, etc., searching for their equivalents in translation may pose problems. One of the difficulties is that administrative divisions differ from country to country. Examples cited in this paper consist of administrative terms used in Benin, Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal. This research takes an empirical approach. Indeed, the search for equivalents in the target language (i.e. English or French) is based on real-life experience and observable data. The findings reveal that source language and target language items rarely have ‘the same meaning’ in the linguistic sense; but can function in the same situation. The contextual meaning of a term is more important in this discussion than the linguistic sense. Equivalence is not only a theoretical notion but also an empirical concept.

Determinants of Media Consumption by Audience – Creating a Conceptual Model

Purpose: This paper aims to comprehend the various factors that influence the audience's media consumption so that media firms may create content effectively. Design: Newspaper articles, academic journals, case studies, and online searches were the main sources of information used in this study. The study evaluates the postulates and variables that impact media consumption through focus group interactions. Findings: The study thoroughly reviews empirical concepts to examine the postulates influencing media consumption. The variables related to the study were perception, likes and preferences, awareness, local media services, and actions that affect media consumption, as determined by developing a conceptual model evaluation. Originality/value: While the conceptual model was being developed, the study discussed multiple variables that influence media consumption and, with the aid of several models and theories linked to media consumption, identified several postulates. Paper type: A literature review to create the conceptual framework.

Kant on Philosophy as Conceptual Analysis

For Kant, philosophical investigations are inherently analytic. The proper method of philosophy is analysis, and the object of analysis are concepts. Hence, Kant’s short description of philosophy as “rational cognition […] from concepts” (KrV, A 837/B 865) can be substituted by “philosophy is conceptual analysis”. The article shows that Kant follows a representationalism about concepts and a combination of intensional and extensional feature semantics. Against the claim that Kant is a proponent of the concept-judgement-inversion, it is argued that concepts are being articulated in form of singular terms, propositions, and sets of propositions alike. Kant interlinks different kinds of concepts with different kinds of definitions, as the reconstruction of his theory of definitions reveals. Philosophy foremost deals with what Kant calls “given” empirical and pure concepts. Such concepts are object of analysis, i.e., explication and exposition. The article ends with answers to five possible objections. Is philosophy all about analysis?

Evaluation of the Usefulness of Ozone - O3 in the Treatment of Low Back Pain. Is it Really Something more than an Empirical Concept? Systematic Review of the Literature

Low back pain (LBP) is a common pathology, and its high prevalence has led to the emergence of alternative options that have gained popularity without objective epidemiological evaluations. This work seeks to clarify the utility of ozone in the treatment of LBP. A systematic literature search was conducted following the principles by PRISMA. The search included articles published up to June 2023. Each of the authors reviewed the abstract of the articles and applied the inclusion and exclusion criteria. A total of 28 articles were selected: 18 prospective randomized clinical studies, 3 systematic reviews plus meta-analysis, and 6 retrospective case series studies. The treatment of LBP is complex. Advancements have been made in recent years from biomechanical and pathophysiological perspectives, but ozone therapy is not considered a treatment option. Techniques that involve the use of ozone fall into the category of empirical options. International guidelines for LBP exclude ozone therapy. It is advisable to conduct further studies under strict parameters to better evaluate its outcomes.

Kripke, Quine, the ‘Adoption Problem’ and the Empirical Conception of Logic

Abstract Recently, there has been a significant upsurge of interest in what has come to be known as the 'Adoption Problem', first developed by Saul Kripke in 1974. The problem purports to raise a difficulty for Quine’s anti-exceptionalist conception of logic. In what follows, we first offer a statement of the problem and argue that, so understood, it depends upon natural but resistible assumptions. We then use that discussion as a springboard for developing a different adoption problem, arguing that, for a significant class of basic logical principles, there is indeed a difficulty in seeing how they might be ‘freely adopted,’ thereby vindicating something close to the spirit of Kripke’s original claim. This first part of our argument will enforce a significant qualification of Quine’s claim that basic logical principles can be empirically confirmed. In the concluding sections of the paper, we turn to the question, specifically, of the empirical revisability of logic, arguing that when proper attention is paid to the role of reasoning in theory revision, it does indeed emerge that anti-exceptionalism, in full generality, is untenable.

Evolutionary Science, Empire, and Disenchantment in May Kendall’s That Very Mab

Abstract One of the more remarkable satires of English society and thought of the 1880s came in the guise of a fairy story, That Very Mab (1885), in which the eponymous fairy queen is driven out of Samoa by imperialists and on her return to England finds it overrun by evolutionists and the proponents of modern material progress. Written by the satirist and popular Punch contributor May Kendall, That Very Mab excoriates Victorian England by satirizing its passion for explanatory frameworks, including scientific materialism, philistinism, nihilism, novel metaphysics, evolutionary progress, and imperialism, all subjects that Kendall also attacked in her comic verse (published between 1885 and 1894). Kendall has recently received critical attention for her satiric poems about evolutionary science, materialism, and modern disenchantment. While That Very Mab’s satiric concerns in many ways dovetail with those of these poems, the wider scope of its fantastic narrative allows Kendall to enact a more sustained assault on the concept of empire and its justifications from evolutionary anthropology. Highly skeptical of teleologies that promote a belief in the evolutionary progress of humankind, her fairy fantasy links evolutionary anthropology to the dishonest blandishments, corruption, and violence of imperial adventures.

독립잡지의 개념 규정 및 유형화 연구

This study aims to define and categorize the concept of independent magazines in detail. To this end, in-depth interviews were conducted with independent magazine publishers, and 300 cases of independent magazines that were in currently circulation or closed were analyzed. First, the research results cannot single-concept independent magazines with complex characteristics, but the concept of independent magazines can be explained cross-sectionally by subject, publisher type, publishing cycle, content content, production method, advertisement, circulation, distribution method, and magazine edition. Second, the types of independent magazines can be largely divided into publishers and topics. The publisher could be categorized into one person, group, minority group, magazine, publication, and complex, and the subject type could be subdivided into total class, art, literature, photography, design, illustration, cartoon, lifestyle, social culture, and subculture. Finally, it was revealed that independent magazine publishers are publishing magazines in a complex trend. The significance of this study is to reveal the empirical concepts and types of independent magazines that have not yet been conducted in Korea, and to present related basic data and evidence.

'Visible' compulsions: OCD and the politics of science in British clinical psychology, 1948-1975.

This article historicizes a single stage in how the contemporary obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) category was built. Starting from the position that the two central components which make up OCD are 'obsessions' and 'compulsions', it illustrates how these concepts were taken apart by a small group of clinical psychologists working at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley psychiatric hospital in south London in the early 1970s, and why compulsions were investigated whilst obsessions were ignored. The decision to distinguish the previously undifferentiated symptoms is attributed to the commitment amongst psychologists at the Maudsley, most notably Stanley Rachman, to an empirical conception of science which emphasized observability. Two aspects of this are discussed. First, compulsions were deemed 'visible' through their correspondence with animal behaviour. Second, the symptom was seen as open to an experimental modification procedure which privileged visible outcomes. Ultimately, the article concludes that the historical division between 'obsessions' and 'compulsions', and the extensive investigation of the latter, has had substantial implications for the development of OCD as a category centred on visible behaviours and treated through behavioural means.